The success of Ryan Reynolds’ irreverent antihero has sped comic book adaptations towards grown-up territory, while the genre’s child-friendly side still thrives with animated fare such as Big Hero 6 and the Lego Movie spin-offs

Saving the world from an over-abundance of R-rated superhero flicks ... Lego Batman in The Lego Movie.
Photograph: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture/AP

The success of Ryan Reynolds’ irreverent antihero has sped comic book adaptations towards grown-up territory, while the genre’s child-friendly side still thrives with animated fare such as Big Hero 6 and the Lego Movie spin-offs

In many ways it’s long overdue. Comic books in 2016 look nothing like their 1950s counterparts, so why should superhero movies stick to their kid-friendly roots? Batman has shunned the children’s market ever since Christopher Nolan reimagined him as a brooding crimefighter, his antagonists harbouring sociopathic visions of hell on Earth. Even Superman has grown up a bit: in trailers for Batman v Superman Henry Cavill exhibits a grim-faced countenance that would have had gentle giant Christopher Reeve running for the Kryptonian hills. And let’s not forget that the most anticipated of Warner Bros’ planned slate of movies based on DC Comics’ back catalogue is not Zack Snyder’s movie, but the crazy-gang noir that is David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.

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And yet if big-screen superheroes are slowly turning to the dark side, they are also returning to a cooler, meta-infused vision of their child-friendly roots. The Lego world offers the perfect medium for comic book titans to be wound back to their origins with bombastic hamminess, a la the 1960s version of Batman with its clownish baddies and stern-faced, spandex-clad heroes. In its own way Lego Batman, an upcoming spin-off of The Lego Movie, will offer just as many knowing nods to celebrated comic book tropes as Deadpool, but without the pegging jokes or sudden limb removal. If it’s a success – and The Lego Movie was one of 2014’s biggest hits – we could perhaps expect outings for Lego Superman, Lego Wonder Woman and more.

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But it’s not only in the Lego universe that superheroes are being reinvented for younger audiences. Last year’s Oscar-winning Disney Animation Studio venture Big Hero 6 took an old Marvel title and reimagined it as a Pixar-style paean to youthful creativity, in which superhero-like powers are within reach of any child willing to pay attention in science class. It even gave us the character of Fred (voiced by Deadpool’s TJ Miller), a teenage fanboy who quite simply refuses to believe that he won’t one day battle evil as a fire-breathing dragon-man – and is quite brilliantly proved right.

In many ways – and Pixar’s The Incredibles and Disney’s Bolt are further examples – the old-fashioned superhero template, based on an unflinching belief in the triumph of decency over devilish deceit, has decamped wholesale to animated territory. And why should comic book fans complain when such a shift leaves so much room for live action superheroes to move into grownup terrain? So here’s to a future in which Lego Batman takes on Deadpool 2 at the multiplexes – and both sides win. As Fred from Big Hero 6 said: “I like the way this is heading!”